Piaget and Metalinguistics: a Developmental Overview

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ED 181 441 CS 005 226 AUTHOR. Van Kleeck, Anne TITLE- Piaget and Metalinguistics: A Developmental Overview. POD DATE Feb 80 NOTE 34p.: Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Interdisciplinary OAP-OSC Conference on Piagetian Theory and the Helping Professions (10th, Los Angeles, CA, February 1-2, 1980)

EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Child Language: Cognitive Processes: *Concept 'Formation: *Developmental Stages:. Elementary Education: *Language Development: Language Skills; Linguistics: Preschool Education IDENTIFIERS *Metalinguistics: Piaget (Jean) ABSTRACT This paper integrates a recent' conceptual shift in riddle childhood language acquisition research--the study of metalinguistic development--with a Piagetian perspective on cognitive development to propose a theoretical framework froa which to consider langpage development during this period. The paper first defines metalingui stics and then uses a Piagetian framework to distinguish between the reasoning abilities of the preoperational and the cncrete operational child.. It then discusses some general cognitive skills underlying all the various manifestations of metalinguistic awareness. It suggests that the metalinguistic skills that emerge during the preoperational stage reflect the child's focus and abilities during this period and that changes in reasoning that emerge with the onset of concrete operations result in success on more complex metalinguistic tasks. Developmental changes in children's performance on the+ diverse sht of Skills considered metalinguistic in nature are cited as evidence in support of these claims. (FL) Piaget and metalinguistics: A developmental overview

Anne Van Kleedk

University of Texas at Austin

Paper presented at the Tenth Annual International Interdisciplinary UAP- USC Conference on Piagetian Theory and the Helping Professions, Los Angeles, February 1 and 2, 1980. Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Carla Buford, Stephanie Jasuta, David Hakes,'Laurie

Newton, and Alice Richardson for their very helpful comments on the ideas • presented in this paper. Piagét•and Metalinguisticst A Developmental Overview

Anhe Van Kleeck

'University of Texas at Austin.

Researchers in language acquisition freely admit the very scattered nature of information available on development during.the middle childhood years. They

are saying, in effect, that as a field we lack a general framework for concept-

ualizing development during this period. This paper integrates a recent concep-

tual shift in Middle childhood language acquisition research--the study of meta-

linguistic development-'with a Piagetian perspective on cognitive development

to propose a theoretical framework from which to consider language development'

during this period.

Language development during this period of middle childhood may be thought

of in teens of two qualitatively different achievements (after bakes, Evans, &

'runmer, in press); (1) the continued development of primary linguistic skills,

i.e., understanding and producing longer and more complex sentences, and (2)

the emergence of metalinguistit skills, the ability to consciously= reflect pon •

the nature and properties of'language. This second aspect of language develop-

ment--that of burgèoning metalinguistic awareness--is the focus of this discussion

paper. '

The discussion begins by defining metalinguistics. Next, using a Piagetian

framework to distinguish between the reasoning abilities of the preoperational

and the concrete operational child, some very general cognitive skills under-

lying all the various manifestations of metalinguistic awareness are discussed.

It,is suggested that the metalinguistic skills which emerge during the preoper-

ational stage reflect the child's focus and abilities during this period. The changes in reasoning that emerge with the onset of concrete operations re-

suit in success on more complex metalinguistic tasks. Developmental changes

in children's performance-on the diversé,set of skills considered metalinguistic

in nature are cited as•evidence in suppot;t of these claims.

Metalinguistics Defined

The. distinction between primary linguistic and metalinguistic skills was

best stated by Cazden (1976)2

It is intuitively obvious to us as language users that when either

speaking or listening, our focal attention is not on speech sounds, nor

even on larger units such as words or syntactic patterns. Our focal atten-

tion is on the meaning, the intention, of what we or someone else is trying

to say. the language forms are themselves transparent; we hear through

them to the intended meaning. As the Duchess rightly says in Alice in

Wonderland, "and the moral of that is--take care of the sense and the sounds

will take care of themselves."

However, it is an important aspect of our unique capacities as human

jbeines that we can not only act, but reflect back upon our actions; not

only learn and use language, but treat it as an object of analysts and ob-

servation in its own right. Meta-linguistic awareness, the ability to make

language forms opaque and attend to them in and for themselves, is a special

kind of language performance, one which makes special cognitive demands,

and seems to be less easily and less universally acquired than the language

performance of speaking and listening (p. 603).

Cazden uses the transparent versus opaque metaphor to capture the distinction between primary linguistic and metalinguistic skills. Various other ways of conceptualizing the differences between these two aspects of linguistic skill

have been. offered, all of which offer clarity to the distinction. some suggest that primary linguistic skills are unconsciously used, i.e., that language users are generally unaware of the linguistic processing by which they give meaning to messages. This is contrastéd with a (fore' conscious awareness characteristic of metalinguistic'skill,§,-.whereby one focuses attention upon the actual form of the linguistic message (Hirsh-Fasek,'; Cleitman, & Gleitman, 1978; ::lobin, 1978).

Read (1978) likens primary linguistic skill (speaking and listening) to knowing something and metalinguistic skill tb knowing that one knows it. Others have

spoken of linguistic skill as implicit knowledge and metalinguistic skill as

explicit reflectins and.manipulations of language (Levelt, Sinclair, & Jarvella,

1978). Franklin (1979) discusses primary linguistic skills as performance-in-

context, where language is "readfly conceptualized in pragmatic, means-end terms"

(p. 199). Thin contrast:; with reflective performance, wherein the linguistic

medium "that ordinarily has the status of instrumentality or means to an end

then assumes a different character= it is disembedded from the context of ongoing,

action and becomes an 'object' which can be inspected, operated upon, related

to other 'objects,' and so forth" (p. 199). In general then, metalinguistic

awareness is manifested when language temporarily becomes the object of thought

rather than functioning, as it does in most ongoing discourse, as a vehicle for

the transmission of thought.

Cognitive Strategies Underlying Metalinguistic Skills

Since Chonsky's publication of Language and Mind in 1968 in which he

suggested that linguists should also be cognitive psychologists, language dev-

elopment research has evidenced a concerted effort to determine cognitive cor-

relates and determinants of language acquisition, pioneered by the work of !loom (1970. 1973). From these, efforts ha$ arisen general notion that certain aspects of cognitive development appear to be necessary, although not sufficient, pre- requisites for certain aspects, of linguistic development. To date, this research has focused mainly bn the earliest stages'of language development. Attempts have been made to tie early linguistic accomplishments with the cognitive achievements accrued during the'sentorimotor period of development in infancy. With a few notable exceptions (e.g., Ingram, 4975, 1976; Sinclair fc Ferreiro, 1970; Tremaine,

1975), there has been little effort to determine correspondences between cognitive and linguistic advances in later stages of development. Indeed, Furth (1969) suggested that to attempt to do so would be to misconstrue the nature of language, with'its primary purpose as a tool for communication. As children learn more about the, shared linguistic form of their particular linguistic community, their language becomes better suited to the purpose of communication and simultaneously decreases in.its capacity to directly reflect underlying cognitive structure.,

This caution is only necessary if one continues to search for a direct corre:.pondence between increasing cognitive knowledge and learning to map that knowledge linguistically, i.e., being able to semantically represent what is corn.ltively known. !'here are undoubtedly other ways that cognitive growth can

Influence linguisti.e advances besides being reflected in the semantic content. of language.. Indeed, recent work relating to the pragmatic aspect of language development has sought to establish some of these less direct correspondences.

:or example, Bates and 'her colleagues (Bates, (',amaioni, & Volterra, 1975) found that a child's attainment of the ability to invent new means to familiar ends

which occurs in sensorimotor Stage 5 was a cognitive prerequisite for gestural performatives. 'words were used in the same performative sequences in Stage 6.

It is not that the children talked about means/ènd relationships, but rather that trey began to use language, as they would any other "object; as a means to an end. It is likely that the influence bf cognitive advances on later stages of language development are likewise of this less direct nature, i.e., that it does not always consist of a direct tr%nslation of cognitive knowledge into semantic representations of that knowledge. 'iecause the linguistic medium itself is an "object" in the child's environment, cognitive advances in which the child learns new ways of reasoning about or acting upon other objects in.the environment. would . also be ,reflected in the ways that the child learns to act upon language. It is precisely this lese direct type of influence of cognition on language development that has been postulated fOzr the flowering of metalinguistic abilities in the middle childhood years.

In general, a compelling argument can be made that the processes involved in carrying but many metalinguistic skills are the same as thbse which evolve during the concrete operationál stage of cognitive development (Hakes et al., in press}. Such a stance is theoretidally appealing when one analyzes the processes that appear to be involved in various. metalinguistic skills. Furthermore, it is indirectly supported by a growing body of empirical evidence on the develop ment of these skills. These studies generally show that children begin having success on a,wide-variety of metalinguistic tasks at around 6 to 7 years of age. this is the same age they would be expected to be making the transition into concrete operations.

To date, the study by Hakes et al. (in press) is .the only one that has directly addressed the issue of a relationship between concrete operations and metalinguistic skills. This was done by measuring skills in both domains (a set of conservation and metalinguistic tasks) across he 4 to 8 year age range. The resulting correlations between the tdsks provide promising initial'evidence that these skills are indeed manifestations of a single underlying development. Hakes et al. propose, "that this underlying development is the same as that which " underlies the deyelopoent of concrete operational thought" (p. 27).' To be sure,

there is evidence of some emerging metalinguistic ability during the preoperational

.stage o.f cognitive development,' and-these skills reflect the child's focus and

abilities during this period. It is argued, however, that,mahy of these skills

are not truly metalinguistic in nature. Those which are metalinguistic have simpler

tasks demands which are within the capacity of the preoperatidnel child. The

generál position taken here is the same as that forwarded 'by hakes and his colleagues-

at the onset of concrete operations one witnesses a flowering of metalinguistic

abilities across a wide range of superficially dissimilar-metalinguistic tasks.

Metalinguistic performance in the preoperational stage

Several characteristics of children's thought in the preoperational stage

of cognitive development offer explanation for their failure on many types of

metal1nguistic tasks,'and their success on others. Preoperational children's

thought is characterized by their being able to attend to only-one aspect of a

given situation at a time., Piaget refers to this as centration. For example,

.in a conservation task involving continuous quantity, a child is first presented

with two identical beakers containing equal amounts of water, and'then observes

the contents of one being poured into a taller, narrower beakér. The preoperation-

al child will focus on only the height of the column of water and will not con-

sider the relationship between the height and width simultaneously. The child

thus believes the taller beaker contains more 'rater. A related characteristic

of children's thought in this stage of-development is, that it lacks

reversibility --they cannot shift back and forth between aspects of a situation.

In the conservation task, they focus only on the postrtrahsforhsational state of

the water and fail to consider how this relates to the pre-transformational state

wnen the amounts of water were perceptually equal. In metalinguistic performance, the tendency to centrate is reflected in

á child's capacity to focus on one component of language at a time--either form

or content, but'not both 'simultaneously. Furthermore, they are unable to shift

focus within one component of language, e.g., from one meaning of a particular

fotm to an alternate meaning of that same form. As such, the preoperational child

will experience success op those•metaiinguistic tasks which do not require more

than one focus simultaneus.y. Another characteristic of the preoperational child

is that he or shé is strongly,attuned to the semantic content of messages.

The: communicative function of language is paramount--conveying and interpreting

meaning is the overriding goal in listening and in speaking. While adults also

generally focus on meaning in message formulation and comprehension, they are

capable df shifting focus of attention to the form of a given message and

simultaneously retaining meaning.

The metalinguistic performance of children in this cognitive stage can be

characterized in two ways. First, those metalinguistic skIlls which preoperational

children do possess serve the communicative function .of language that children

in this stage are focused upon.. Flavell (1977) refers to this subset of meta-

linguistic skills as metacommunicative--"namely, the ability to take a verbal

communicative message a::.a cognitive object and analyze it" (p. 178). :iecond,

on other metalinguistic tasks which'require subordinating the communicative function

of language, preoperational children often perform incorrectly due to their

:constraint of being .able to focus on only one aspect of the linguistic code.

Most often this Is the semantic focus, but occasionally, there is a focus on

linguistic form. The point is that children in this stage are limited to focusing

on one aspect'of the code at a time. These two tenetsregarding metalinguistic

development in the preoperational child are in fact well supported by available

evidence." Metalinguistic skills serving the communicative function of language. The earliest emerging metalinguistic ,kills in the •ltLerature are those which enhance communication. Skills often considered metalinguistic in nature which serve

this function include (1) correcting or revising one's own speech in responses

to self-monitoring or listener feedback and (2) learning to adapt to the age, status, background, and/or special needs of one's listener. Even as young as

two years of age, at the onset of the preoperationalstage, children demonstrate

some skill in these areas. Gallagher (1977) provided evidence that in the earl-

iest stages of language development (Brown's Stage 1, MLU- 1.5) children either

repeat or, more frequently, attempt to make revisions or corrections in their owri speech when there has been an indication of communication failure (e. g., to

an adult questioning "What?").

Not only do very young children respond to listener indications that there

has been a communication failure, they are also capable of indicating when they

have failed to comprehend a message produced by another. Very young children

'will often interject "huh?" or "what?" into a conversation (although this may

not always indicate a failure to comprehend a message but may sometimes serve

o keep the interaction going). Older children can be more explicit in pinpointing

where the breakdown occurred, as evidenced by the following interlude with a child of 4=9 (from Marshall rc Morton, 1978)1 •

Adult: You look elegant in your new dress. Child: What does elegant mean?

There is also evidence that children begin adapting to the unique needs

of their listener at a surprisingly young age. Schiff and Ventry (1976) report

that 2 year old hearing children born to deaf parents used two different systems

to communicate--one used with hearing people and the. other with deaf people.

hese Children used more gesture, shorter utterances, and more deaf-like distortions

with their deaf mothers than with a hearing adult. Similar sensitivity to the special needs of the listener has been widely documénted for 3 and 4 year olds.

' Compared to language addressed to peers or adults, four year olds use shorter,

simpler language "when addressing ,2" year olds (Shatz k Gelman, 1973) acid when address

:ing developmentally delayed peers (Guralnick & Paul-Brown; 1977). WheR,repgrting

a past event, 3 and 4 year olds adjust their language according to whether the

listener was present at Lhe'past event or tot (Menig-leterson, 1975). Likewise,

.3 and 4 year olds are more explicit in their messages addressed to a listener

they are told is blind than they are•in messages addressed to a listener who can

see (Ma ratsos, 1973).

Preoperational children alsq demonstrate their awareness that speech and

language behaviors differ according, to characteristics such as age, status, role,

, etc. by their role-taking abilities. Andersen (1977) had children,4 to 7 years

. of age do the voices of, puppets for a father, mother, and baby and for á doctor,

nurse, and child patient. She found that even her youngest subjects adjusted their

speech to differentiate among the three family roles.

Preoperational children are also aware of alternation rules, i.e., that

one can vary the surface structure of language to convey one particular pragmatic

intent. Bates (1976) tested the awareness of these social rules with Italian.

children bya having them judge which request would be more likely to get .sweets

. from an old lady puppet, "I want a sweet" or, "I would like a sweet." As young

as 44 years, children were able to fairly consistently choose the least direct

request as the nicer One. While preoperational children can make these alter-

nation judgments, "Bates suggests that not until seven or eight years of age

does the child become able to manipulate both surface syntactic form and the

content to achieve communicative goals" (Miller, 1978, p. 425).

chile skills such as the above are often cited as examples of metalinguistic

awareness (Clark, 1978; Jinclair 1978; Marshall Ac.I Orton•, 1978); it As questjonable that they should'be•categorized as such. In the original definition

of metalingui'stic awareness given in this paper, it was pointed out that skills ,

reflecting such an awareness genera]ly de-emphasize the communication function

of language, disembedding the linguistic medium from ongoing discourse. Meta-

linguistic abilities "involve reflecting upon the properties of language as opposed

to thosé involved in using it to communicate" (Hakes et A1., ,in press, p. 26).

Phe skills just discussed, on the contrary, do not de-emphasize the communicative

f unctibn, but actually serve to enhance it. And yet, certainly in the case of

revisions, it does seem that some degree of awareness or focus upon the linguistic

code itself is occuring. These very early emerging' skills can perhaps best be

thought of as providing a bridge between primary linguistic activities and iietá-

linguistic awareness. As Marshall and !Orton (1978) suggest, "awareness arises

out of devices for finding faults" (p. 228). So while they do in a sense reflect

nascent metalinguistic ability, they are clearly not as sophisticated as later

.emerging skills in which language itself is consciously focused upon and manipulated.

The nature of the distinction between these early emerging metalinguistic

skills and those acquired later was perhaps best captured by Jakobson (1960).

Citing as_'examples various ways that language users elicit clarification of meaning

in conversations, Jakobson suggested that "we practice metalanguage without real-

izingthe metalingual character of our operations" (p. 56). Later emerging

metalirtguistic skills differ in that one not only focuses on the linguistic code,

but the language user is often consciously aware of the focus and subsequent in-

tentional manipulatins of.the code.

.Metalin: stic skills in, mhich children céntrate on semantic content. The

. .preoperational child's performance On seeral other metalinguistic tasks reflects

his or her propensity to focus on the semantic contentof language, rather than

being able to shift attention to the linguistic medium used to convey that content. ,This is evidenced by the nature of children's responses to several types of meta -

linguistic task; including those which'tàp their ability to differentiate word

from referent, to segment sentences, into .words, and to make acceptability judg-

ments regarding grammar.

In learning to reflect upon the properties of language, a child eventually

becomes aware .that language represents--that is, the word is distinguishable from

the object it stands for. In tasks which attempt to assess this awareness, pre-

operational children are generally Unsuccessful because.they respond on the basis

of a word's meaning rather than its form. For example, in a study by Berthoud-

Papandropoulou (1978), children were asked to give examples of words with certain

properties, e.g., long, short, asi difficult.. When asked for a long word, a typ-

ical response from a preoperational child would be to provide a word such as

"train," because it refers to'something long. Preoperational children cannot.yet'

separately focus on the linguistic form. They focus on properties of referents

rather than on.properties of linguistic elements per se. This semantic bias of

the preoperational child is also evidenced when they are asked to define what ,

a word is. In this same study by Berthoud-Papandropoulou, ode preoperational

child responded, "A strawberry is a word because it grdws in the garden'."

,A similar type of response has been noted 'When children are asked questions .

related to the arbitrary nature of language (i.e., the fact that the, sound=meaning

correspondence is an arbitrary cane) . Both Oshersort and Markman (1978) and Vgot- .

sky (1962) found that preoperational children will agree that .an object's name

can be changed,'yet when they attempt to do so, attributes cling to the name

when it is transferred. Thus, the child will agree that a cat can be called a

dog, but he or she will also insist that the cat so•called can also bark. Sim- ilarily,a dog called a cowwill have horns. .Here agaih, meaning prevails. Ling- uistic forms do not yet have their own identity apart from the meaningthey encode; . they carinbt be focused upon separately.

Yreoperationa1 children again reflect their semantic bias ina task which

asks them to segment a sentence into the number of words it contains. An example

from Berthoud-Yapandropoulou (1978) is illustrative of the younger child's; meaning

focus:

Examiners Six children are playing. How many words? Childs Six. Examiners What are they? Childs Me, my little brother, Christiane; Anne, Jean, etc. (p. 61).

Phis particular example, while illustrating a semantic bias, perhaps underestimates

the preoperational child's abilities., The number "six" in tae sentence may have

confused the children. Indeed, other researchers have found that preoperational

.children are able to segment sentences into their component words (e.g., Ehri,

1975; Holden & MacCinite, 1978; HuttenTocher, 1964).

children's performance on acceptability judgments provides yet another example

of their semantic focus in responding to metalinguistic tasks during the preop-

erationa'1 stage of development. These tasks generally present both syntactically

acceptable utterances, i.e., sentences in their nsttural word Order, and sentences

where natural word order has been permuted. Children five years of age and under

appear to judge the truth value of an utterance (Bohannon,.1975: Cleitman, Cleitman,

& Shipley, 1972; Hakes et al., in press; James & Miller, 1973). An example

provided 'by Cleitman et al. illustrates the early semantic bias in responding

to this'type of task. In their study, one 5 year old responded that the sentence

"I am eating dinner" was unacceptable. The bhild went on to explain that he

did not like to eat dinner, showing the the response was based on the assertion

and not the grammatical form of the sentence. In summary,•there is "a tendency

for younger children to judge-sentences on the basis of what they assert rather'

than the linruistic manner in which they do 'so" (Hakes et al., in press, p.e 105) Not only is the preoperatioclal child generally focused upon the semantic

content of messages, it also appears that they aro aware of only one meaning of

a particular linguistic form. This corresponds with the tendency to centrate

on one thing at .a time and the lack of reversibility in the preoperattOnal child's

reasoning. These limitations preclude their being able to considex the same form

as having two different meanings. For example, Asch and Nerlove (1960) studied

3 to 12 year old children's comprehension of dual function adjectives which refer

to both physical and psychological properties (e.g., soft, ha 40, sweet, bitter).

These investigators first assessed the children's, literal comprehensiozV

they wers asked to point to the "sweet" one (a cube of sugar), the "soft" one

(a powder puff), etc. Once literal comprehension was verified,. the children were

asked "Are people gold? Do you know any cold people? how do you"kno'+ they, are

cold? What do they do or say when they are cold?". Asch and Nerlove four..d,that

children under six years had little awareness of the psychological meanings.

In a similar vein, it has been noted that preoperational children are also

unable to resolve humor which uses linguistic ambiguity. Linguistic ambiguity

occurs when the same word or sequence of words can have very' different meanings.-

For example, in the following riddle, the resolution rests on the dual meaning

of the word "club" as either a social organization or a large stick:

question: Do you believe in clubs for young people? Answer: Only when kindness fails Ohultz, 1974, from W.C. Fields).

Metalinguistic skills in which children centrate on linguistic formt As

was mentioned earlier, preoperational children appear to be limited to focusing

on but one aspect of the linguistic code at a time. Most often, as the previous

examples indicated,. that focus is upon the semantic content. Occasionally, however,

the preoperational child'appears to spontaneously focus on just the form of Lang-

* , ua8e, or demonstrates earlier success on tasks which require manipulations of • just the form o: language.,

Examples of spontaneous manipulations of linguistic form are found primarily in. the diary studies or similar accounts by linguists of their own children.

Some children show at least a rudimentary level of awareness of the sound system at an extraordinarily early age.' Smith (1973) reports that a 212‘ year old child, after a year of pronouncing "quick". as "kip," one day announced, "Daddy, I can say quick." Weir (1962) noted the following sequence in the bedtime monologue of her 2-* year old sont "Berries, not barries. Berries, not barries. Berries, not barries." Weir'$ data also gave examples of spontaneous rhyming, another manipulation of the phonological.aspect of linguistic form.

Children also give early evidence of awareness of morphology. Leopold '0949) discusses how his daughter Hildegarde at age 3:3 one day amused herself by adding the diminutive -ie ending to ell sorts of 1 nlglish words not usually so modified.

(e.g., "wallie, chairie, bdoksies") (vol. 4, p. 61). The author of 'this paper has noted a similar phenomenon in the language of a 3;11 year old girl named Niki.

As she was stacking seriated sized ring on a graduated width clumn to form a pyramid; she uttered the following sequences

What goes first? This? Then thisie? This? Yup. Nopie. Let's see. Then this one? Then thisie? Yea. Yuppie. Yippie. Then this? Then thisie? You gotta be .careful. No. Yup. There. Then this? Then thisie? Yes. Yippie.

Occasionally, children will ask spontaneous questions regarding morpheme

boundaries. Cleitman et al. (1972) reported of a 4 year old who asked, "Mommy,

is it AN A-dult or A NUH-dult" (p. 139). Horgan (1979) notes a similar incident

involviñg her 4 year old daughter, Kelly. Mother was explaining that Bonnie

and Kathy live in the same dormitory, and Kelly asked, "Is the mitory for Bonnie's door and Kathy's door?" .While Kelly inaccurately placed the morpheme boundary, she indicated no awarenesq or confusion as did the child reported by Gleitman et al. .Many. of us remember our own similar inaccurate placement of morpheme boundaries in holiday sangs, the Pledge.of Allegiance, and other memorized mu- tine.

l'here is indeed question regarding how consciously many of these above examples of spdr.taneous linguistic form manipulation are executed. As such, one might question if they are truly metalinguistic in nature. Furthermore," thew

Chey may as such, be extraordinary for them age rather than being representative of their peers. Further study with larger samples of children is needed to address this issue.

The above discussion-cited examples of preoperational children's occasional spontaneous focus on linguistic form. This tendency has also been noted in their elicited responses to metalinguistic tasks presented to them. One set of metalinguistic tasks which ask children to focus exclusively on theform of language involve segmenting language into its component parts. :segmentation can involve various units: words, syllables, or phonemes. The ability to segment into syllables emerges earliest, beginning as young as four years of age

(e.g., Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, & Carter, 1974). Children begin to be able to segment speech into words somewhat laterby approximately 5 or 6 years

(e.g., Ehri, 1975: Holden & },acGinito, 1972; Huttenlocher, 1964). The ability to segment words Or syllable* into phonemes is the last to emerge, begihning at around 6 or 7 years (Liberman, 1973). By this time, children are in the concrete operatignal stage of development. " •

Hakes et al. (in press) and Read.(1978) both discuss how this order of ener- gence'is logical when one considers the nature of the acoustical signal. ?$yllableá have a physical correlate, i.e., they.do exist in the actual acoustic

signal. Words and phonemes have in common that they are both abstractions from

the. acoustical signal. "There is no simple physical basis for recognizing either

a word or a segment . . . (It appears, then) that children begin their analysis

quite close'to the phonetic level" (Read, 1978, p. 73). Phonological awareness,

on the other hand, does not emerge until middle childhood, around 6 or 7 years.

The foregoing tasks all required focusing on linguistic form for successful

resolution. Preoperational children also demonstrated this tendency to focus

on form in one task where this focus proved to be unsuccessful. This appeared

to be the response strategy children used in a task which required them to slake

synonymy judgments, i.e., determining when different words or groups of words

have similar meanings. to perform this task accurately, one must make two judg-

ments. First, they must determine that the forms are different and then that

the meanings are identical. Hakes et al. found that children younger than six

..(preoperational) made synonymy judgments on the basis of form alone: That is,

to judge sentences as non-synonynmous, they required that the forms be different.

This strategy would result incorrect judgments when the sentences were in fact

non-synonymous and incorrect responses when they were synonymous. This is pre-

cisely the pattern flakes et al. found with the younger children. "Their judg-

ments of non-synonymous pairs were correct significantly more often than chance,

but their judgments of synonymous pairs were incorrect significantly more often

than chance" (p. 86).

Summary of preoperational metalingui etic skills. The metalinguistic abil-

ities of the preoperational child have certain predictable .characteristics.

First of all, several skills which do emergeduring this period serve to enhance

the communicative function of language. This very aspect of the nature of these

skills,. however; leads one to question if they are truly setalinguistice Second, the preoperational child's propensity to centrate results in their being able

to focus on only one aspect of the linguistic code at a time--either form or

content, but not both simultaneously. Depending on the task demands of a par-

ticular metalinguistic skill, this results in the child sometimes performing

successfully (e.g., segmenting words into syllables) and other times performing

unsuccessfully (e.g., synonymy tasks).

Metalinguistic performance in the concrete operational stage

As children progress into the concrete operational stage, qualitative changes

in their thought processes occur which would logically result in increasing success

in their performance on metalinguistic tasks in general..Central to the quail-

^tative changes occuring in children's reasoning ability as they make the trans-

ition from preoperational to concrete operational thought is the ability to de-

center--to attend to more than One aspect of a,sltuation simultaneously and to

consider relationships between these aspects. Related to this is the emerging;

ability to shift one's thinking back and forth between aspects of a situation.'

These advances are reflected in a child's performance on the conservation of

continuous quantity task mentioned earlier. Concrete operational children can

focus on both the height and width of the'column of water and thus realize and•

often explain that although the column of water has become taller, it has also

become narrower. They also compare the post-transformational state to thee, pre-

transfoniational state and are able to note that the amount of water has not

phanged simply by pouring it into a different beaker. This general flexibility

Of thought enhances performance on various i tàlinguistic tasks.

While all metalinguistic tasks initially involve focusing on linguistic

.form. each specific task can be conceived of in terms of manipulating either

the form or content of the diseabedded linguistic object. Still other tasks appear to require a manipulation of both form and content. Successful perform-

ance un any metalinguistic task, then, can be thought of in terms of a two stage

process. First, there is a necessary shift away from meaning to some aspect

of linguistic fora. The form may simply be provided, as when the child is pre-

sented with a word to segment into syllables. Some of these tasks are within

the capacity of the preoperational child. In more naturalistic situations, the

form is not provided. riere a first step involves "focusing and disembedding--the

procedures which provide the object initially" (Franklin, 1979, p. 208). Nek't,

metalinguistic performance involves some kind of manipulation-of the linguistic

object disembedded. Here the various tasks categorized as metalinguistic differ.

Some require themanipulation of form (e.g., segmenting a word into phonemic

units) whereas others require the manipulation of semantic bontent (e.g., moving

-from one meaning to an alternate meaning in ambiguity resolution).

The ability to dieentrate allows the concrete operational child to perform

the initial step--to con3lder language simultaneously as ,a medium for conveying

meaning and as an object in its own right. This underlies the capacity to,disembed

forms from ongoing discourse. For example:to resolve lexical ambiguities, the

child must focus upon and disembed the lexical element which is ambiguo4. The

manipulation stage of mètalinguistic performance 'often requires reversibility

ln the lexical ambiguity example, the child must be able to tack back and fort

between and compare alternate meanings of the lexical item. This ability to '

compare two meanings is analogous to the child's ability to compare pre- and post-

transformational stetes to correctly solving conservation tasks. As noted' in

the previous section, metalinguistic tasks which do not require the child to

keep is mind and manipulate two things are often within the capacity of the pre-

operational child. Content manipulation: Decentratinp on two•dvanings. Several tasks involve

manipulating the ravening of a particular, linguistic object. Perhaps even more

accurately, these tasks can be conceived of as requiring the child to decentrate,

i.e.,\ to- keep in mind more than one meaning of a linguistic form simultaneously.

these tasks were beyond the capacity of the preoperational child, who could center

on only one thing at a time. As discussed earlier, this skill is required in

resolving lexical ambiguity humor. In this case, resolution involves shifting

from One conventional meaning to another. Children begin enjoying success on

this kind of task at around six or seven years, simultaneous with the onset

of concrete operations (Fowles & Glanz, 1977; Hirsh-Pasek et al., 1978).

Comprehending and producing figurative language such as metaphor also involves

shifting from one meaning to another. In this case, however, the shift is from

a conventional meaning to a more hypothetical or possible meaning. Gardner and

his colleagues (Gardner, Winner, Bechhofer, & Wolf, 1978) discuss the cognitive

correlates of metaphor competence. Although pre-adolescents attain some meta-

phoric competence, it is possible that a flowering of this ability requires ¡he

attainment of formal operations (Elkind, 1969; Inhelder díPiaget, 1958). 'rhe

child's cognitive and linguistic capacities have now advanced to the point where

he can classify objects in a variety of ways, reflect upon language as an object,

and deal riot only with the given objects of the present,,but also with a universe

of possibilities. Such intel]kectual growth is reflected in metaphoric tasks.

ho longer is the child restricted to a single comparison, nor to an approximate

understanding of metaphor, he can now appreciate a variety of links between do-

mains, hit upon the exact sense intended in a metaphor, and offer a detailed

paraphrase of the figure" (Gardner et al., 1978,•p. 21). Because of the hypothets: ical nature of the alternate meaning in comprehending metaphor, they are rarely

within the capacity of the goncrete operational child: Children in concrete operations are capable of recognizing two conventional meanings, however, such as the physical and psychological meanings of dual function adjectives like

"hard" (A Bch ,& r erlove, '1960).

Form manipulation. Petalinguistic skills in which only a form manipulation

is required and'a meaning focused strategy is not possible are often within the

capacity of the' preoperational child (e.g., segmenting words into syllables is

a purely fdrmal manipulation and there is no semantic strategy for approaching

tnis tank). Also, form manipulations. which enhance. communication are also performed

successfully. by preoperational children. In several other tasks requiring form

manipulations in which preoperational -children give inaccurate responses due

to their semantic bias, the concrete operational child often enjoys success.'

for example, tasks which assess differentiation of word and referent require

form manipulation. In naming a long word, the concrete operational child 'focuses

on the number of letters in the linguistic form, and not, as would his or her

preoperational counterpart, on the properties of the referent.

Making grammaticality judgmenth likewise requires a form manipulation.

The sentence must be compared to stored knowledge of what is linguistically

acceptable. The•concrete operational child is able to ignore meaning in responding

to this task. They judge instead the linguistic form used to convey that meaning.

Segmentation skills which require retaining meaning also await the onset •

of concrete operations before successful performance is possible: The ability

to produce secret languages is illustrative. Here the task is to re-sequence.

.phonemes by an artificially imposed•rule, tiut also to convey a meaningful message

at the same time. While some children are able to perform this task in the

concrete operational period, Sevin (1972) suggests that there is a great deal

of individual 'variation in children's ability to produce secret languages.

The ability to segment words into phonemes does not require simultaneous retention of meaning. The emergence of this skill at the. onset of, concrete operations cannot be easily explained by qualitative differences ia: the child's reasoninr a.t this juncture, since other segmenting, skills emerge in the- pre- operational period. Read (1978) suggests that we need to "question Whether this awareness depends on instruction, or successful instruction depends on this awareness" (p. 73). It may be that the emergence of this particular metalinguistic skill'is better explained by experiential factors such as instruction in pre- reading skills than it is explained by a general Change in the child's reasoning capacity.

Content and form manipulations. Some metalinguistic tasks require that the child manipulate both the form and the semantic content of language simultaneously. Synonymy judgments are one such task. "Making this judgment requires constructing, retaining, and'comparing representations of meanings of two sentences, for they are synonymous only if these semantic representations are

(essentially) identical. In addition, the judgment requires some kind of repres- entation of the sentences' superficial forms, for only if these are different can the two sentences be synonymous" (Hakes et al., in press, p. 85). Preoper- ational children in the Hakes et al. study had difficulty performing both content and-form comparisons and often performed only the form comparison. Concrete operational children, on the other hand, judged on the basis of both form and content.

In cases of certain types of linguistic ambiguity such as morpheme boundary ambiguity, both form afid semantic content are manipulated. For example, consider

-the following riddle.

questions Why is the man in the fish market stingy? Answers Because his job makes him sell fish. The resolution involves. manipulating form by moving the morpheme boundary. In this case, the alternate morpheme boundary. is to combine the two words'"sell

fish" into the single word "selfish." Then, one must also shift from, the meaning

of "sill fish" to the meaning of "selfish." This form of ambiguity is not re-

solved. until children.are around 12 years of age. The late onset for success

on this type of task is not surprising when one considers the complexity of the

task demands.

Summaly of concrete operational metalinguistic'skills. In summary, the

. reasoning skills of the concrete operational child allows him or her to exper-

ience success on metalinguistic tasks which require either (1) comparing two

conventional meanings of a particular disembedded linguistic form or, (2) mani-

pulating form and simultaneously retaining semantic content. Some metalinguistic

:kills appear to require combinations of both of these above abilities.

Go4nition: A part but not the whole

The preceding discussion provides convincing evidence that cognitive growth

underlies a general flowering of, metalinguistic ability. Two recurrent findings •

in this research, however, point out that there are other variables. in addition

to decentration and reversibility that influence metalinguistic ability, These

findings are that (1) while many metalinguistic skills emerge around the same

time as the onset of concrete operations, within the same child, some also emerge

earlier than this time And others emerge several years later, and (2) there is

some evidence for large individual differences in metalinguistic performance •

(e.g., Brodzinaky, 19?7;. Fowles k Glanz, 1977; Hirsb-Pasek et al., 1978=. Kessel,

1970)., These two findings indicate. that there is more variability tban can be

explained by cognitive level alone..

The first source of variation fits well with the Piagetian concept of horiz-

ontal decalage.. This refers to .the often observed fact that children will exhibit different levels of development with regard to problems requiring similar mental

operations. Children's. erformance on conservation tasks are illustrative.

While children conserve continuous quantity by 6 or 7 years of age, they do not

conserve weight until 9 or 10 years. Conservation of volume emerges even. later

at around 11 or 12 years of age. ,In'metalinguistic tasks, skills often likewise

emerge over a several year period. For example, recall that lexical ambiguities

are resolved by :6 r 7 years, while morpheme boundary ambiguities are not re-

solved until Children are around 12 years of age. Possible reasons for this

particular horizontal décalage were offered in the earlier discussion. It

appears that lexical ambiguity requires only a content manipulation once the

-linguistic entity has been isolated. Resolving morpheme boundary ambiguity

requires both form and content manipulations of the disembedded linguistic objects.

Numerous other variables may also influence metalinguistic performance.

-f.or example, Fowles and Clanz (1977) suggest that comprehending lexical ambiguity

riddles requires some familiarity with riddles and riddle telling formats. Here

social experience is needed in addition to cognitive skills. In resolving lexical

ambiguity, vocabulary skills might also come into play. In other words, the

child needs to be familiar with both meanings of the particular ambiguous word.

In many metalinguistic tasks, undoubtedly some stimulus items are more difficult

than others for a var»ty of reasons (e.g., grammatical complexity, lexical

difficulty). Response demands also vary. an some tasks, the child may need

only to demonstrate awareness in some way. In others, they may be required to explain.

The large individual difference,a in some metalinguistic performapce„alsd

point out that the cognitive advances of concrete operations may be necessary,

. but they:are not sufficient for the flowering of metalinguistic abilities. Indeed, their existence alerts one to search for other relevant variables. One

potential variable that has been repeatedly noted in accounts of individual child-

ren with precocious metalinguistic abilities is exposure to language games (Melt-

man et al., 1972; .Horgan, 1979; Slobip,. 1978). Other sources'of variation may

include individual cognitive style. For example, Brodiinsky (1975) found that reflective children development a sense of humor earlier than impulsive children.

The propensity to use verbal ambiguity humor may be related, then, to cognitive

style variables. . In a similar vein, Horgan(1979) noted that her metalinguis- tically precocious daughter Kelly had a high degree of tolerance for degraded

stimuli in her symbolic; play. Kelly would accept almost any object to stand.

for another, whereas most children prefer some perceptual sin4ilaritx: Horgan

postulated that "Kelly's tolerance for degraded stimuli may be related to her

willingness to 'degrade' or â lter'established patterns" (p. 11) ., This may relate

to, her metalinguistic precocity.. Undoubtedly, there are many other variables

which contribute to metalinguistic performance that remain td 'be determined.

Summary

.In this paper, the position was taken that' children`s performance on any

metalinguistic task is influenced to an extent by the general cognitive strategies available to then at a given point in development. As such, the metalinguistic

Skills whichemerge during the preoperational and concrete operational stages •

..of cognitive development can be viewed in terms of how they reflect the child's

abilities during each of these periods'of development respectively.

Preoperational children are.primarily'attuned to the communicative function

of language. and are generally unable to subordinate this message oriented

function. Corresponding to this focus, métalinguistic•skills whichenhance • the communicative fynction Qf language, such as correcting errors in ongoing

discourse, begin appearing early in the preoperational stage of development.

Also characteristic of preoperational children is their capacity to•focus on

only one aspect of a situation at a time. In aietalinguistic~ performance, this

focus results in their being able •to focus on only one .aspect of the orm or

:Content of language at a time.• Whesi a semantic content strategy•is possible,

these children often exercise this. option to performing'on metalinguistic tasks.

• Occasionally, they are able to focus solely on the form of language. This latter

strategy generally occurs when a semantic content strategy is not possible.

Depending on the nature of the particular task, the response strategies of the'

preoperatioäal child sometimes resùlt in successful performance More often,

however, he or she performs incorrectly.

With the ability to decentrate--to focus on Are than one aspect of a

situation simultaneously--which emerges with.theonset of concrete operations,.

success on more complex metalinguistic'tasks is achieved. The concrete oper-

ational child is able to subordinate • the meaning of messages and focus On the

linguistic code used to encode them, Furthermore, they can consider two meanings

of a particular linguistic form at a time. In general, the reasoning skills

of the concrete operational child results in his or her success on a wide range of metalinguistic tasks. While more evidence is clearly needed to support the direct relationship'

between cognition and metalinguistic performance postulated in this paper, thé

indirect evidence cited strongly supports such a position. References

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